Emmanuel Macron, the elite's poster boy, may struggle to revive a wounded France

Emmanuel Macron, head of the political movement En Marche!, waits to deliver a speech Credit:
PHILIPPE WOJAZER /REUTERS

France’s election campaign has been remarkable in many respects – not least of all because the polls going in had the top four candidates, each promising their own vision of change, almost evenly split across the electorate. Globalist, nationalist, interventionist, traditionalist – there was a candidate for every predilection.

The result, while widely speculated, should unsettle: the only person who now stands between the far-right Front National and victory on 7 May is an entirely untested independent candidate, former economic minister Macron – the symbolic embodiment of everything that seemingly gave rise to his authoritarian opponent in the first place.